Local God
by Summoner Luna
Summary: Balamb is different, after the war. Or is he the one who's changed? [Zell, homecoming, and the things he left behind. He'll risk his life for a life he might not remember, but not for a life he isn't going to live. Post-game, for The Successor challenge.]
1. Chapter 1

_There goes my hero,_

 _watch him as he goes._

 _There goes my hero,_

 _he's ordinary._

 _-Foo Fighters, "Hero"_

_._

Garden docks in Balamb the day after the victory celebration. There are rumors that Sefier was seen, and Squall has decided it is better for them to find him, than a citizen who doesn't trust the system and has their own ideas about justice.

Zell excuses himself from the manhunt. He says he's not sure he could act responsibly if he's the one who finds Seifer, and he' s not sure he's ready to deal with questions from people at home. Squall nods, Rinoa looks at him with concern, and Selphie grabs his hand and pulls him towards the quad, chattering about how now he'll be free to help her with cleaning the place up.

They depart that night, without Seifer. Zell is deep in the training center when departure calls are made, and between the thick palm leaves and angry cries of Rex, he misses the alert on his comm-device, and stands firmly by that excuse.

That's what he has, while Garden is mobile-excuses. And they are good excuses, real excuses. They would almost even be reasons, except one day he finds Rinoa in the library and she asks him, in that almost creepy, see-straight-through-you way she has of looking past people's bluffs, if he's afraid to go home.

He mutters something about needing to meet someone and going to the wrong place and leaves, and doesn't look back to see her watching him with eyes demanding honesty. She doesn't bring it up again, and he almost wishes she would.

The next time they dock in Balamb, it has been four weeks since leaving Ultimecia's Castle, and Zell stands on a hill overlooking the town with his heart in his throat and an unprecedented urge to run away.

 _Are you afraid to go home?_

There are no excuses, now. They will be here for the better part of the month, and the town of Balamb has never been blind to the looming shadow of Garden sitting at the foot of the mountains. He's already avoided it long enough that he's probably made things even worse, and he knows that no matter how hard it's going to be, it's not worth what he is doing to the person he would do anything to protect.

And in his silence, he has done anything but protect her.

"Zell!"

"Dincht! You're alive!"

"Hey-if it isn't the Hero of Balamb!"

Zell waves and grins at the voices as he walks through town, but doesn't stop to talk. He could spend an entire day on the street with a growing audience if he wanted, spinning tales of glory, but that's not how he wants to start this trip. Within three blocks he has had two people offer to take him for a drink, and Ransley "Big Bad Rascal" Donovan pops and starts running circles around him, eager to hear about all the gory details of the war.

"It was so awesome when the fighting came here!" the Rascal says. "Like, real-time fighting! I bet it was like that all the time, right?!"

"All the time," Zell says, with less enthusiasm than he wishes he could muster. He is two doors down now, and if her window is open the way it usually is, the Rascal's voice has carried in, and his arrival will not be a surprise.

"I can't wait to hear more-"

"-Hey. I'll catch up with you later, dude. I've got to-"

"Ohh, right, right. Your Ma ain't been herself, since you never stopped in to say-"

"Thanks, Ras. Where will you be later?"

"Come by the shop! We'll go next door, you can make me jealous! Later!"

Zell watches Ransley run towards the docks, and is surprised at how weary he feels after their short exchange. He blames it on nerves, and takes the next few heavy steps towards the familiar front door, and stops.

And the door swings open.

They stare at each other, each second an eternity of silence for every day he didn't even call, and while she has to look up to meet his eye, he feels so small, and so young.

Finally, she speaks. "I hope you weren't thinking of knocking on your own front door."

"I uh-"

"And don't you dare say anything about not being sure if this is still your home. This will always be your home, as long as you have mind to call it that."

He scratches the back of his head, unsure of the right thing to say-and is almost knocked backwards when she throws her arms around him and holds him, the kind of hug that only a mother can ever truly give.

Zell wraps his arms around her, gently. He is certain she is crying, and if he's not sure how to deal with tears to begin with, he is nowhere near prepared to deal with them from his Ma. So he rests his hands against her shoulders, and wonders if there even _is_ a right thing to say.

He expected her to be angry that he hadn't called. He would have been angry. He knows it may still be coming, but he was sure he'd see it right away.

He expected her to look different, for the _house_ to look different, knowing what he knows now. That he would look at her, at his mother, and see a stranger, and wonder that he ever believed they were related by blood.

What he sees, is home.

And what he says, and what he truly means, is, "I'm sorry I didn't come by sooner."

.

After dinner, Zell leaves to walk around town. His plan was to wait until the next day, but after the third interruption from someone who heard he was home (and just wait until he gets his hands on the Rascal), Ma shakes her head and pushes him out the door to make his rounds, and to "go, be a hero."

When he returns home it's late. He has spent the night on the docks, at an impromptu party thrown by his old friends. Thierry, who manages the dock records, has music pumping through the speakers in the harbor, and it feels to Zell like half the town is here. He is the guest of honor and everyone wants to hear him talk about the war, and it is his chance to boast, to shine; to do what he cannot do at Garden, where no one would believe him anyway. Not next to Squall, silent and haunted and the obvious leader of their victory.

But in Balamb, Squall is a SeeD who showed up a couple of times on missions, and helped Zell drive out the occupation when Galbadia came looking for Ellone. Zell is the hero.

He always has been.

He finally leaves well after midnight, and is surprised that Ma is still awake, and ashamed when she tells him she's gone to bed often enough without knowing he's safe, and tonight she didn't have to do that.

He tells her goodnight, and lets her usher him upstairs to his room, and he sits still for a moment listening to her moving around downstairs, locking the door, turning off the TV.

The night has almost been normal.

Zell pulls a pair of athletic shorts out of his dresser and changes, and sits on the edge of his bed and looks around. It's quiet for the first time since he entered the town this afternoon, and there is a peace in the silence he never could have appreciated before. Something was off in the party tonight, and away from the loud music and chatter of people he tries to place it. Compared to dock parties they've had in the past, this one was just a little on the rowdy side of average. More people, and maybe more whooping and hollering, but no one ended up in the water, and the Rascal spent most of his time embellishing Zell's stories and throwing in a few of his own from Balamb's brief occupation, rather than trying to start fights or chasing skirts all night long.

He flops back on the bed and sighs, and his mind wanders to the party at Garden just a few weeks back, and in that, Zell thinks he recognizes the difference.

When he reaches over to turn out his light, his reflection moves across the framed picture of his grandfather on the opposite wall, and Zell props himself up on his elbow and stares for a few minutes.

"You're the reason I did this, you know," he tells the photograph. "And it turns out, I've got no more in common with you than I do with Rinoa's old man."

The man in the picture looks into the room, the cool, competent stare of a soldier.

"Hmph." Zell clicks off the light and lays back, and drifts asleep to the image of his own picture in an impressive frame, and what kind of legacy he might leave behind.

.

Ma has breakfast ready when he comes downstairs the next morning, and hands him a glass of orange juice and asks him about the party. Over pancakes and bacon, he tells her about the night before, and she updates him on everything that's happened in the town since he left.

The occupation, he learns, did more damage than they thought, and Zell is quiet for a few minutes on learning this. It was too dark the night before to see how much work the town still needs, and he thinks of how foolish he was to assume things went back to normal after they drove out Fujin and Raijin.

"There was still some fighting," Ma tells him. "Even within the town. Those two used to be friendly around here, and quite a few people wondered if we weren't wrong to resist them."

"They were under orders from a madman," Zell points out. "Who actually wanted to follow them? I'll be happy to let them know exactly how stupid that was." He thinks of the night before. How many of the people who came to celebrate his homecoming had opposed his mission? The thought is infuriating, and Zell curls his fist on top of the table.

It does not go unnoticed.

"Zell, it's over. No matter what people thought then, they figured it out before it was too late."

"Someone should have called us," he says. "SeeD could have come back and helped fix things. It was half our fault, anyway."

 _We,_ he thinks. _Us._ It's strange to refer to himself as separate from this place, this town that has always given him such a sense of pride. Strange, but he knows, he _is_ separate. In a way he's not sure can ever change.

Ma smiles at him sadly, and he wonders if she isn't thinking the same thing.

 _But you've always known. I'm not really from here._

He shakes his head, and has missed the first part of her answer.

"-cost, and no one here has ever wanted to rely on Garden, you know that."

"Ma, Garden's right next door. Of everywhere in the world Balamb should know better than anyone there's nothing wrong with hiring SeeD. Thanks to field training there's hardly any monsters to worry about, plus I overheard Xu saying something about the money Garden gives to Balamb for transportation, since we use the train station and docks so much. Balamb's a Garden town, might as well take advantage of that."

"Who's Xu?" is all she asks, and Zell sighs.

"She led the field mission I took to become a SeeD. She's like…Squall's second-in-command now."

"That must be hard for her."

"What?"

"Didn't he take his field exam at the same time you did? It must be hard for her to report to someone she used to outrank."

"Oh…" Zell frowns. It's strange to hear someone talk about Xu who doesn't know her. He's pretty sure Xu would hate that. "I guess. But seriously, I can come out here with Selphie, Quistis, and Irvine sometime. He's not even SeeD, so if anyone asks it's not a SeeD contract. Just some friends helping out. We owe this town that much. I'll talk to Thierry this afternoon, see what he thinks."

Ma nods, and gives him a distant look. It's one he recognizes; she wore it when he told her he wanted to go to Garden, when he said he planned to sit for the SeeD exam, and the day he left Balamb on his first mission to Timber. He looks away from her and studies the streak of syrup drying on his plate, and stands, and starts clearing the table.

It's a mother's look, he thinks. He saw it on Matron when they realized Squall had abandoned Garden and was taking Rinoa to Esthar, and later, when they agreed to Esthar's plan to defeat Ultimecia. Something born from love and, Zell thinks, longing. From knowing that things can never be as they once were.

He wonders if he has worn that look since he arrived. He wants to bring it up-to ask her why she never told him he was adopted, to ask him if she knows anything about his birth family, but now that he's back it seems like such a stupid request. This is the house he grew up in. And it doesn't matter how old he was when he got here, or what his life was like before, this is his life now-but he knows, and he feels like she deserves to know that he knows, and he has no idea how to bring it up.

So he doesn't.

Instead he finishes the breakfast dishes, and leaves to go into town and see what kind of damage has really been done. He promises Ma he'll be home for dinner, and sends a message to Squall that he won't be back at Garden until at least the next day. He gets a simple, "Okay" in response, and laughs to himself. In the last twenty four hours of surrealism from being back home, he can at least count on Squall to be predictable.

In town, however, things are nothing like he predicted. To hear Ma talk, he expected to see buildings burned to the ground, streets blown out and cars flipped on their sides. Instead he sees signs not of battles, but of…well, looting.

 _Dammit, Rascal,_ he thinks. The comic shop he always loved has boards up over busted windows, and down several streets are lewd images spray-painted on the sides of buildings. He reaches down to pick up a large piece of glass on the sidewalk outside a now-closed lingerie shop and runs his thumb over the flat part of the surface. He wonders how someone as level-headed as his mom could have over-exaggerated things to such a high degree, but then, she didn't exaggerate on anything. Not really. He's just seen so much destruction in the last few months that he jumped immediately to "war-torn" as soon as she said the fighting continued after they left.

Timber, is war-torn. There are more businesses there closed than aren't, and in the short time they were there it was not uncommon to hear bursts of gunfire from Galbadian soldiers pushing the people of Timber into the few spaces they could still walk in open daylight. Garden itself is war-torn; second floor classrooms unsafe to occupy in case the floor falls out from structural damage, the back end of the quad still roped off where a chunk of it fell into the Garden blades. Zell shudders at the memory of Rinoa standing beside him one second and gone the next, and the nightmares he had in the weeks to come of watching her through outstretched fingers, crushed with the rest of the the debris.

"Ouch!"

He looks down, and has cut his finger on the shard of glass.

Balamb isn't war-torn. Balamb is victim to a few rowdy kids taking advantage of the chaos in ways they'd be likely to do anyway, and for the first time since arriving, Zell feels genuine emotion from being back in his hometown, and it's _anger_.

"You wanna see a real war?" he shouts down the empty street, and his voice comes back to him, hollow and out-of-place. He curls his fist around the glass and feels it cut into his palm, and grits his teeth against the pain and lets it fly. The point hits the eye of a bikini-clad woman staring down at him from the side of the used bookstore, and Zell watches the sun catch the shards as they rain back onto the street.

He hears a door, and the owner of the store holds her hand over her forehead to shade her eyes, and Zell stares at her, no way of hiding that he was the one who yelled.

"…Zell Dincht?" she asks. "I heard you were back. Is everything okay?"

"All good!" He grins at her, and shoves his bleeding hand into his pocket, and his anger along with it. "Just…"

"Surprised?"

"A little. You'd think on a bookstore they could have at least drawn something…bookish. I'm guessing Ransley's behind this?"

"Right in one," she nods. "No one else would take that kind of talent and waste it on being so offensive to women. That pose is ridiculous."

Zell looks up at the graffiti again and laughs. "Looks like the comic shop was looted, guess he used some of those covers for inspiration."

"Strange to hear that, coming from you, Dincht. I remember you buying quite a few of those before you left back in the spring."

He shrugs, and gives her an embarrassed smile. "I've got a friend-a couple of them, actually-they spent an afternoon going through my comics and uh, educating me, to put it nicely, on how unrealistic the poses for women are. I'm a little afraid if I don't hold their position, they'll find out and I'll have hell to pay-and don't laugh, you haven't met these two! One of my buddies still has the scars to prove you don't mess with girls with fingernails!"

She laughs even harder, and Zell finds his anger starting to genuinely subside. He imagines Irvine's reaction to the Rascal's additions to the city, and cringes a little, already anticipating Rinoa using it as an opportunity to soapbox about inequality.

"You know, I can bring some friends out here, help clean things up. Ma didn't seem to think it was worth it, but what would you think? It wouldn't take us long to fix all these busted windows, or paint over Ransley's, uh, art. If we're calling it that."

She grows quiet, and they look together down the street. Other than the graffiti, her shop is little worse for the wear, but the boarded up storefronts and debris in the street is a hard sight to stomach. Beside him, the bookseller sighs.

"Balamb's different, Zell," she says. "I wouldn't care, but I'm not speaking on anyone's behalf. You all came in before and kicked Galbadia out, but a lot of people here won't forget it was Garden students at the helm, or how quickly you all left once the fighting stopped."

"We had to-"

"-But did you? That entire boat full of mercenaries, and you in the inner circle of the guy running the place-not to mention the handful of other Balamb natives who went to Garden to follow in your footsteps. You couldn't spare a few people to stay behind?"

Zell is quiet. His hand is throbbing and his head is spinning, and he thinks back to the day Garden left. Didn't they leave someone behind? But he can't remember it even coming up in conversation. They started to talk, and Selphie said she wanted to go to Trabia, and off to Trabia they went.

Embarrassed, he mumbles, "Squall wasn't in charge then."

"What?"

"Squall-Commander Leonhart. He didn't take up command until a few days later."

She laughs, bitter this time. It sounds harsh against the genuine laughter from moments before. "Zell, anyone here just needed one look at that man to know who was in charge. He might not have known it, but he could have asked for this city in gold and someone would have found a way to do it. He _exuded_ 'Don't Fuck With Me.' And more than that…why didn't _you_ stay?"

"Because-" but he stops. Because he was under orders? Because there was too much going on, too much happening too quickly? Because…

 _Because by then, your loyalty wasn't just to Balamb._

"It's okay, Zell. Like I said-I've got nothing against you or Garden, and I hear last night a lot of people came out to express the same thing. But you're thinking about coming in and helping from Garden's point of view. Just…don't forget to think about things from our point of view too, okay?"

"You got it."

She smiles at him, and waves before walking back into her shop. He pulls his hand out of his pocket and stretches his fingers, sticky with blood, and hangs his head.

He changes his mind about going to see Thierry, and heads north instead. It doesn't feel right to want to train, not when he's supposed to be here on leave, and not when there's nothing outside the city worth training on anyway, but he can pull a few Cures out of something to take care of his hand if nothing else, and it's better than staying in town and running into Ransley. He reaches up and plugs in the feed that links him to the Brothers, and on the edge of town, he pauses.

When, he wonders, did he _stop_ thinking about things from Balamb's point of view?

* * *

 _Part 1 of my submission for The Successor challenge. I intended to post this all at once, but time keeps getting away from me, so this is proof that I am actually working on something! Part 2 will be up by the end of August, but I can't begin to predict more than that._


	2. Chapter 2

Though the fields are as disappointing as he expected, Zell walks the edge between plain and forest grateful, if not for a release, for the distance they provide. The trees break slowly, the grass running into the tall face of the cliffs that overlook the town, and he climbs familiar handholds until he find the outcrop he spent so much time at when he was younger, before SeeD, before Garden.

Here, the ocean spreads beyond the town, and Zell follows it, past the docks, past the bright blue shallows, and out towards the horizon.

He remembers his grandfather's stories, written in journals that Zell used to stay up reading. Stories of the railroad hub on the large Galbadian continent, of the big city in the south that talked about going to the moon. Zell knows he had a clear idea of the Esthar from his grandfather's days, pre-Adel, pre-isolationism, but all he can see now are the crystal highways and speed-shuttles, and the shadow of Lunatic Pandora as it moved across the skyline.

The world seemed so much larger, then. Even after he'd enrolled in Garden, he spent time here imaging the adventures he would have once he made SeeD, the places he would go. It was hard to put Balamb into context, then. Hard to line up the tiny coastal town with the world he had yet to see. Balamb never felt large, but it always felt like enough, and no matter how many stories he heard or how much he learned, he never could grasp the magnitude of how much bigger the world could be.

And now…

The world feels smaller now, he thinks. Below him the rooftops of Balamb slope gently towards the sea, rising and falling in the pattern of the seaside hills. Even the architecture brings to mind the patterns of the sea, the hotel the only building with any real majesty. He hears a muffled whistle, and watches a train emerge from the undersea tunnel. It moves slowly, at this distance. It's been too long for Zell to remember the station schedule, and he wonders where the train is coming from. Dollet? Deling? The trains in Timber are finally running again, and Zell imagines Rinoa's friends sitting in their own private spaces, listening to the screaming whistles. Is it peaceful for them, he wonders?

Is this peaceful for him?

He sits on the cliff until his stomach starts to growl, watching cars move silently through cobblestone streets, and boats that appear to sit still against the horizon.

It is peaceful, this middle ground. No one else in Balamb knows how small the world really is, and no one at Garden knows how big Balamb really is. Zell smiles to himself at this secret knowledge, and then pats his stomach when it lets out another gurgle.

He moves down the cliffs, and his pace on his way back home is not as heavy as it was when he left.

Lunch with Ma is quiet. She asks if he wants to go anywhere and he declines, not sure if he wants to risk running into the Rascal, and he tells her so. She laughs, and points out that Zell probably would have done the same thing, if he hadn't joined Garden. He scowls, and she laughs again, but apologizes this time.

"I'm only kidding, honey," she says. _Honey._ The word rolls off her tongue as someone who never needed practice. What did she sound like, when she first brought him home?

"Hrmph," is all he says in return.

After lunch he tells her he's going to hang around. The quarterly written exam for active SeeDs is next week, and Zell has heard it favors conceptual, versus practical knowledge. He stretches out on the couch with a set of flash cards he got from Quistis, while Ma sits reading a book. He feels her glancing towards him from time to time, and knows they are both thinking of the many afternoons he spent like this, before taking his field exam.

"You always were worried about your grades," she says at one point.

"It's not just grades, Ma. It's my pay, now."

She makes a clucking noise, and gets up to start dinner. Zell looks at the cards he's already gone through, and thinks of how much easier it would be, if he were back hom-back at Garden. Rinoa and Irvine would quiz him and Selphie, and they would make it as difficult as possible, and Quistis would sit nearby, watching with that patient smile she wears so well. Zell has heard that she helped write several of the questions on this year's exam, and no one, not even Xu, has passed the A rank tests with higher marks.

He has one card left when there is a knock at the door. It's Thatcher, from the auto shop, and his daughter, stopping in to say hi. Ma invites them in, and they join Zell in the living room. Thatcher heard his stories from the night before, but Mara, his daughter, wants to hear them first hand, and Zell sits up and puts away his cards, and thinks of the best place to start.

There is another knock, and this time it's Thierry. He is holding a glass dish, and Zell looks from the dish to Ma, a theory starting to form.

"Zell!" Thierry drops beside him on the couch, and looks to Mara. "Don't believe a word he says," he laughs, and Mara smiles. "He keeps talking about his team, but we know better, don't we?"

The three of them laugh, and Zell grins, playing along. "I had to try and come home modest, didn't I?"

"See?" Thatcher shouts towards the kitchen. "Modesty! Told you SeeD would change him!"

Ma comes out of the kitchen with a pitcher of tea and a stack of cups, and Zell takes it from her and starts pouring for their guests. While he is passing them around they hear more noise outside, and Thatcher opens the door before their next guests have a chance to knock. The owner of the hotel walks inside, followed by a young guy Zell only vaguely recognizes as the new assistant manager. They hand Ma a bottle and what looks like some sort of dessert, and he is finally able to catch her eye. She shrugs, and says, "I wanted you to have a more personal welcome home party."

He shakes his head, and turns quickly back to the tea, and makes a show of pouring their new guests glasses so he doesn't have to speak around the lump that has formed in his throat.

Their final guest arrives without a knock, and Zell is halfway back to the kitchen to refill the pitcher.

The Rascal stops dead when he sees Zell standing so close, and Zell is certain his trip past the comic shop has made its way to Ransley's attention.

"Hey there, Dincht. How's uh…how's your day been?" There is a certain degree of shame in his eyes that Zell recognizes from catching him in past antics; shame, but also a challenge.

"Could have been better," he says, his voice low and cool. The crowd in the living room is too loud to hear their exchange, but Zell can hear Ma behind him in the kitchen, the stuttered movements of someone who is pretending not to eavesdrop while working on something else. He fights the urge to ball his fist.

"Yeah? Well…it's great your Ma's having everyone over tonight!"

"Yeah. I guess you're real happy about that right about now, aren't you?"

Ransley looks around the room and back to Zell, and for a moment, Zell sees something like real fear flash behind his eyes, and it gives him pause. Ransley's been behind more than one act of stupidity or vandalism in town, and Zell's almost always been the one to help him clean up the mess. Why would he think this time would be any different?

"SeeD," is all he says, and Zell raises an eyebrow in confusion.

"What?"

"I guess you saw I looked kinda scared of you? It's cause… 'Cause you're SeeD, now. I figure being SeeD…you're probably pretty mad at me, and I don't want to fight you."

Zell wants to laugh, but there's something in the way the Rascal says _SeeD,_ something in the way his shoulders drop, _something_ that makes Zell see him for what he is.

A kid. A few years younger than himself, and realizing for what is probably the first time that what he thought was a prank, might not be taken as such.

He doesn't laugh. Not loud, at least. But a soft laugh, and he reaches a hand out and smacks the side of Ransley's head with the tips of his fingers.

"I'm not going to fight you," he says. "But you'll be answering for what you did, Ras. And to the people you did it to."

Ransley nods, and runs into the living room before Zell can say anything else. He stands still for a second and watches him, and wonders if he shouldn't have said more.

"That was very mature," Ma steps beside him, and Zell turns to face her.

"He's just a kid," is all he says.

She sighs, and that look from the night before crosses her face again.

"So are you, Zell," she says. "So are you. Now help me set the table."

He does as he is told, and soon dinner is served, and he is telling stories until they are bored with tales of war and the conversation turns to cars and fishing, as it always does. As it always has.

It's late when the last of the guests finally leave, and Ma and Zell work quietly together as they finish cleaning the kitchen. She brings in the last of the dishes and he tells her he'll finish up, and he knows she is tired because she doesn't argue, just thanks him and excuses herself from the room. He lays the new dishes down gently in the sink and scrubs them. The smell of dirty plates mixes with citrus detergent, and it is a familiar smell, and while not entirely pleasant, carries with it a sense of peace. He has always cleaned up after dinner, and in spite of the many ways his life has changed, the warm water and gentle clinking of glasses reminds him that he is home.

.

After Ma goes to bed, Zell climbs the stairs and considers taking out his study materials again, but a glance at his grandfather's picture and he changes his mind. He walks instead to his closet and pulls out a dark wooden box, filled with several notebooks lined with delicate script across thin and aging paper. Zell inhales, and the smell gives him chills. It is dust and ink, and it is the scent of calling, of what set him on his path.

He picks the first notebook up and flips through it, careful not to touch any more of the page than he needs to. It is sixty years ago, and his grandfather is in Balamb. He has met a girl, and they have spent the day visiting the ruins of the old Centran bunker. Zell knows he read this entry after first enrolling at Garden, comparing his grandfather's adventures to the Garden he finally got to see, but it's different, now that he knows the place so intimately, now that he has seen the labyrinthine passages below. He never could fully imagine them, and as a new cadet never knew how to ask, until time and the influence of the GF pushed so many of these details from his mind. A few pages later and his grandfather has learned he is being sent back to Deling City. He writes of how much he will miss his girl from Balamb, and promises to marry her when he comes back. Three months later he receives a letter, and knows he is going to be a dad. The story reminds Zell of Laguna, and he wonders if he would like to read any of these stories. He sets the journal to the side, and decides he will ask Ellone.

The next journal he picks up is of Timber. Decades before the Galbadian invasion and Timber is a thriving railway hub, growing larger every day. With his army buddies, Zell's grandfather spends his free time hanging out on the steps of the Timber Maniacs building, watching the construction of a new hotel. He thinks of Balamb often, of his new bride, and of the little girl who runs around the docks. He has been back twice, and has promised to take them with him the next time he comes home. Zell sets this notebook to the side as well. Most of the stories center around thoughts of home, but there are mentions of old buildings, and people he meets in town, and Zell wants to show Rinoa a firsthand account of Timber, before it was war-torn and depressed.

He thumbs through two more notebooks before he finally finds the one he set out to read, dated less than twenty years ago. His grandfather is retired, and settled back in Balamb with his ailing wife. He knows these stories the least. There are no war stories here, no tales of adventure or exploring the world. The pages in this book are filled with the hopelessness and desperation of his grandmother's final months, and younger Zell found the raw emotion easier to avoid.

He reads them now.

His grandmother lived almost a year longer than expected, but the year was not easy, on her or anyone. A hurricane hit Balamb three weeks before she died, and Zell pauses, and double checks the date. He remembers hearing about that storm-it devastated Balamb, and washed half the town out to sea along with changing the coastline of the entire island. Even now, he'll hear some of the elders talk about it with a haunted look in their eyes, and they still compare big storms to The Storm. The date is early fall, and six months before the day he was born. He's heard Ma talk about that storm, but never thought to do the math.

 _The answer was always right there, wasn't it?_

The journal entries slow down, after the entry noting his grandmother's death. March 17th has an entry that only mentions the arrival of a ship from Galbadia, and later that summer there is passing reference that Ma wants to study abroad. There is an entry on the anniversary of the hurricane, and then they end completely.

Zell closes the cover of the notebook, and stares at it for a few minutes, and then looks up at the painting.

"It's just as well," he says. "You had enough going on back then."

He places the notebooks back in their box and slides it into the corner of his closet, and changes into the same pair of shorts he slept in the night before. His room has always felt huge compared to the Garden dorms, but it has always been comfortable, always been his. Now the stillness of it jumps out at him, and he marvels that he felt more comfortable falling asleep in the humidity of the gardens outside the Tomb of the Unknown King than he does here. He rubs his eyes and looks at his watch, only mildly surprised it is well after midnight and he has been reading for a couple of hours. He lays back on his bed and looks at the painting, and sighs. He is exhausted, but instead of turning out the light, he starts to speak.

"You had a hell of a life, Grandpa," he says. "I'm sorry I never bothered to learn more about the stuff that came after the war. The romance stuff…it just didn't mean a lot to me back then, and I can't honestly say that it does today. I wanted to be like you. I wanted to be a soldier, and I guess I am, if you can call us that. There is a girl, but it's not like with you and grandma. I haven't mentioned her to Ma yet since there's not anything to tell, but you might appreciate it. I have some really good friends though. You always talked about what it was like, going through things together, and I know what you mean now. But it's different. The last few months aren't how it usually is with SeeD. Now that the war's over...

"I've told everyone here all these stories, but the stories aren't what it was actually like. But I guess you know that. I know I didn't come home right away, but I've really just been wondering what I want to do next. While we were out there-and I know this doesn't make sense and I still don't really understand it-but we learned about this guy who used to be a soldier, the same way that you were. He was in the Galbadian Army before you retired, so I don't know, maybe you knew him? His name's Laguna Loire. He's-well who he is isn't important, but he was just this enlisted guy, fighting for his country. And that's what his friends did, and that's what all of your stories were about. And we ended up getting to meet him, but he just made me think about why I signed up for this, and how different it looks. We were fighting for the right reasons these last few months, but that's not how it started. It started because someone paid us. And now that things are quieting down, that's what it's going to go back to. And I can't help but wonder…if you would be proud of that? Mercs…we're not soldiers. And all these great friends I have, we could end up fighting against each other. But more than anything, it's Ma. Meeting this Laguna guy, thinking about your stories-you've got these rich lives to tell about. And in five years at Garden, I forgot Ma isn't really my mom. Or not…well you know what I mean. She's my mom but she hasn't always been. And I just…"

Zell sits up, and his next sentence comes out soft, not to the painting, but to himself. "I guess I have to wonder why I'd risk my life, for a life I'm not even going to remember."

He sits in silence, except for the steady turning of the ceiling fan at the far end of the room. After a few minutes he pushes himself off the bed, and goes downstairs. He comes back up with a two small white candles, and centers them on the dresser underneath the painting. He lights the wicks, and turns off the fan when he sees the flames fighting against it, and cracks his window instead.

"For you. And grandma. And for listening." He wants to ask for advice, but he already knows what the answer will be. Instead he turns out the lights, and falls asleep to the distant sound of the ocean, and the low flicker of candlelight.

.

Zell wakes early, and Ma is still asleep. He looks outside at the streets, still blue-grey in the early morning light, the sun still hiding behind the mountains. He glances at his dresser, and both candles have burned all the way down, leaving little pools of white wax on twin glass circles. He is wide awake despite staying up so late, and quickly decides to go for a run. He downs a glass of orange juice and grabs an energy bar from his bag, and spends a few minutes stretching and sets off jogging towards the edge of town. He heads for the coast, and waves at the occasional SeeD he passes, all of them with the same idea as him.

When he returns to Balamb the morning sun is just breaking into the streets. He finishes his run at the docks, and stands, looking out at the sea, and breathes in the scenery. No matter where he goes with Garden, or how advanced the gym and training center might be, nothing has ever come close to watching the sun rise over the ocean of his hometown with fire in his lungs. It is a memory he has not lost, and he will do whatever it takes to ensure he never does.

Fifteen minutes later he stops in the cafe next to the hotel and buys a protein shake and a dozen donuts, and when he gets home Ma is not surprised by where he has been.

"Here," he says. "They just pulled them out of the oven when I got there."

She is sitting at the table with a cup of coffee watching the morning news, and opens the box and Zell watches her smile when she inhales the freshly baked scent of sugar and bread. He grabs a handful of napkins from the kitchen and pours a cup of coffee for himself, and joins her at the table.

"I still can't get used to this," she says, and gestures towards the TV. Zell grabs a donut and is pleased they are still warm after the walk back home.

"What, the news?"

"News from around the world. We never lost the local station, but if it didn't come from underground wires-"

"-it didn't come at all."

"Whatever that place did-Esthar, right?"

"Yeah. Esthar."

"Whatever they did, we're grateful here. I know there are some who think we were better off, but I like knowing what's going on."

Zell is quiet. He forgets sometimes, how much of the war people still don't know. Squall and Laguna decided from the beginning they were risking too many questions if they started talking about how the SeeD team ended up in space. Out of any story he could have come home with, helping bring back TV is something the rest of Balamb could relate to, and it's one of the things he can't tell anyone about.

"I read some of grandpa's journals again last night," Zell says instead. Ma keeps her attention on the end of the news report, and turns to him a few seconds later when it cuts to commercials.

"I'm not surprised," she says. "You always loved reading those."

"I um," he pauses, and stares into his coffee. He watches Ma's eyes dart towards the TV screen and back to him, and he takes a breath, and decides. Now or never, right? "I never paid much attention to the last one he kept before, since he was retired by then, but I looked at that one last night. He talked about the hurricane."

"The one from-"

"The year grandma died, yeah."

"I never knew he wrote about that. Oh, that was a horrible year. I believed for so long if it weren't for that storm, she would have ended up making it."

"Would she?"

Ma shakes her head, and, on seeing tears starting to form, Zell quickly looks back to his coffee.

"No. I actually think it gave her those last few weeks. I think she needed to know we were going to be okay. And thanks to her, we were. She was too sick for us to evacuate, and daddy refused to leave her side. He wouldn't let me stay, but I left for the shelter late, and missed the surge that flooded into the mountains. If she hadn't been sick we'd have been in there with everyone else who died that day."

Zells nods, and takes a breath. He remembers Ma telling that story, now that she's said it. He remembers so much, now. But why is it so hard to say?

"That was six months before my birthday. But then six months later, he was barely writing in those journals, and I'm not mentioned once. And I think-" he looks back to Ma and his voice cracks, and this time he can't turn away from her. Her look now is not the one from yesterday, but deeper, sadder, and Zell blinks several times, and coughs, and leans back in his chair.

"You…remember?" is all she asks.

All he can do is nod.

She takes a slow sip of coffee and places her mug carefully back onto the table, and after a few minutes of silence, she stands, and walks to his chair, and wraps her arms around him.

"I'm so sorry, Zell. I tried… I tried to help you remember. I even spoke to your Headmaster a few times, but all he could tell me was he'd seen similar instances of memory loss in other SeeD candidates. He attributed it to the stress of…of losing your dad. After awhile it just got to be too hard to keep reminding you."

"Stress? He blamed it…he blamed it on _stress?_ "

She nods, and leans back to rest against her heels, and Zell sighs.

"I talked to a couple people in the town. Thierry said it was…what do you call them, Sentient Forces?"

"Guardian Forces."

"Thierry said they caused memory loss. I thought about asking again, but had to keep reminding myself, you were training for SeeD. All the research said that theory couldn't be proved, and I guess I just wanted to believe that Garden was better than you going off to Deling City and joining the army there. It broke my heart, but your mind was made up, and at least at Garden you could still come visit. So I just…adopted your new reality."

"So to speak."

She pauses, and then brings her hands to her face. "Oh-"

"It's okay, Ma," he smiles. "It was kinda funny."

"Are you…angry?"

He pauses. Is he angry?

 _Yes,_ he thinks. But not with Ma. It's obvious now, that this was never a secret. That day at Trabia Zell was too stunned to consider his time before Garden, or that at some point he stopped remembering, but Ma wouldn't have. He has been so afraid to say anything out of fear that she wouldn't want him to know, when the whole time it was probably killing her that he forgot.

"I'm…sorry," he says. "I am angry, but with Garden. Not with you. I wish I could tell you if we were given a choice, if it was explained what might happen. Maybe it was and I agreed anyway. Maybe I was too young to think to ask. Or maybe…" He stops, and realizes that times like these are when he really wishes Squall were around. Squall would be annoyed, and wouldn't want to talk about it, but somewhere in his silence would be an answer. For someone who says so little, Zell is continually amazed at how he really says so much.

"Don't be sorry, Zell. I'm just…I'm just so happy you remember. It's been awful, lying to you this whole time."

"It's not a lie, Ma. I forgot I was adopted. But it's not a lie that you're my mom, and that this place is my home."

She smiles, and Zell leans forwards and gives her another hug.

"I just got off a boat full of orphans, Ma. And I'm not one of them."

She tightens her arms around him, and Zell lets her stay that way, even when he can feel that she is crying, and he isn't sure what else to say. When she pulls back, she wipes tears from her eyes, and sits back quickly in her chair. "I've missed you, Zell. You might have just helped end a war, but you're still my little boy. And you are still a little boy."

"Ma-aaa-"

"-You can be embarrassed Zell, but it will always be true."

He smiles and picks up another donut, and takes a sip of coffee that has grown cold, and grimaces when it hits his tongue. Ma clucks at him, and offers to refill his cup, and Zell watches her, and feels, for the first time since coming home, that he is not being split in two. He is a SeeD, but right now, he is a SeeD who is home on leave.

.

Three days later Zell is nearing the massive gates of Balamb Garden, his bag heavy on his shoulders, and a voice cries out, followed by a blur of movement to his right.

"Zell!"

Rinoa crashes into him with a hug that nearly knocks both of them to the ground, and he steadies himself, and she looks at him and shrugs an apology.

"It's good to see you too," he says, laughing. "Missed me, didn't you?"

She rolls her eyes, but links her arm through his, and they start walking once again towards Garden.

"You know I did," she says. "Selphie was getting worried because you kept extending your time off. A week feels like a long time, when you're used to seeing each other every day. Especially when you only planned to be gone for the weekend."

"Tell me about it," Zell says. "So are you my welcoming committee? Or is it just a coincidence that you were out here when I came walking up?"

She lifts the bags she has slung over her shoulder, and Zell sees the imprint of a book through the fabric. "Reading," she says. "What else? It's so nice out today, and while we're here, I have a place where I can sit outside."

He starts to ask her why she doesn't just use the quad, and catches himself. He still shudders, and feels her give his arm a squeeze with her own.

"DId you find what you were looking for?" she asks, after several minutes of walking in comfortable silence.

He wants to ask her what she means, and if it were anyone else he would, but Rinoa has always been able to strike right into his heart, to ask a question in the simplest of words that brings out the most honest answers.

"I don't know," he says. "But I think… I think that is what I was looking for."

"Not knowing?"

He nods.

"It's all grey now, isn't it?"

He looks at her. Her arm is slack against his, and she is looking ahead at Garden, head tilted up towards the golden rings. Now it is his turn to tighten his hold.

She turns to him and smiles, whatever trance she was in a moment ago broken.

"Squall should be in his room now," she says. "If you need to talk. But don't tell him I said that."

Zell laughs, but shakes his head. "I'll see him later. But don't tell him _I_ said _that,_ or he'll find some excuse to avoid me."

"Your secret is safe." She makes an "x" motion over her heart with her free hand, and winks, before turning her attention back to their path. "So, if you're not going to see him, where are you going to go?"

"First, I'm going to drop my stuff off. Then… I think I'll head over to the library for a little while."

"Got some reading to do?"

"A little," he says, and it is his turn to wink. "I do want to see Squall. I have some questions, and I think he's the best person to help me answer them. But they can wait."

"Well I'm heading that way. Let me take your bag."

He feels the bag lift from his shoulders and hover just behind her before he has a chance to protest, and Rinoa leans up and kisses him on the cheek, and whispers _good luck_ into his ear, and then she is gone, and he is watching her walk towards the promenade.

He allows a moment of hesitation at the concrete steps, and spends a minute letting his eyes trace the line that divides the part of Garden that is mobile from the permanent foundation. He turns once, and looks down the road that leads to Balamb. The town is hidden somewhere behind hill and forest, sloping towards the sea.

Then he turns and crosses the threshold, and heads in the direction of the library, words he spoke aloud the other night echoing in his mind.

 _I'd rather risk my life for a life I might not remember, than for a life I'm not going to live._

* * *

 _Not quite as down to the wire as my final entry in Where I Belong, but apparently I can't do these challenges without ending up posting on the final day._

 _This idea came from the very simple thought that Zell would probably reflect on his war vs. his grandfather's war, and ended up...bigger. I don't ever try and predict word count going into a story, especially not for one-shots, but I can honestly say I did not expect this to be so long! This is an area of headcanon I've never really explored before, and it was fun writing about Balamb. My particular style of writing follows a piece of advice I got in a creative writing class way back in high school, that a writer "should know how much change is in their character's pocket." It took me a long time to really understand what that advice was saying, but I approach all of my projects with that in mind, now. Writing this has certainly given me quite a lot of change in the pockets of the characters from this game-thinking about what the world would have looked like before Laguna's time, how Balamb might relate to Garden-subtle things that might not ever be mentioned again, but I will know, and the characters will know. And now, so will you!_


End file.
